Advice on power supply and cooling

I'm looking into buying a new computer, and have noticed I can pay extra for a larger power supply and liquid cooling. I've never had liquid cooling before. Is it worth it? Does it require extra maintence? Also is buying upgrading a 450 W power supply to a 850 W power supply a good investment?

On liquid cooling, just don't. Go with old logic of market: it exists for decades now, wouldn't it become a standard already if it was that good necessary? Sure it's the most silent solution. But modern fans are silent enough to still use them instead.
However, if you do plan to tinker with the machine daily trying whatever whatnot and earn some youtube $, sure, go for it. Streaming exotics sells.

850W power supply is wasting $. Unless you'll be mining bitcoin with several GPUs I don't see any reason to buy it.

forgottenlor said:

I'm looking into buying a new computer, and have noticed I can pay extra for a larger power supply and liquid cooling. I've never had liquid cooling before. Is it worth it? Does it require extra maintence? Also is buying upgrading a 450 W power supply to a 850 W power supply a good investment?

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On the topic of power supplies, power requirements for PCs are much lower than they were a few years back. CPUs and GPUs have become more efficient. That being said, if you're looking for efficiency, a higher PSU will be it's most efficient at around 50% usage (a 750w power supply is most efficient when drawing around 325w). PSUs are cheap these days. So if you're looking at building a rig with higher power requirements in the future, it may be something to consider. But if your power requirements aren't getting any higher, and your 450w works for you, not much reason to upgrade.

Power Supplies

Liquid Cooling works great for overclocking. These days, liquid cooling solutions come in a factory sealed all-in-one unit (unless you do some crazy custom solution, not worth it unless you're running some 4 GPU gaming setup). You never take it apart or deal with the coolant inside. It's just a small radiator and fan attached to a CPU block. That being said, you need to get one that fits your case properly (there's smaller and larger radiator solutions that are 1 or 2 fans wide), and won't get in the way of your other components like the mobo or GPU. If you're doing some intense overclocking, or you have the money for the coolness factor, and don't mind doing research on cases and components to make sure everything will fit, go for it. But a decent aftermarket CPU heatsink and fan combo (Like a Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO) will be cheaper, simpler to install and maintain, and just as quiet if not quieter, and will still give you nice chilly temps and even decent overclocks if you go that route.

Thanks for the advice so far. I just plan to be playing games on my computer, I won't need power or cooling for anything else. Nor do I care if the computer runs super quietly. That said, I'm pretty sure that my current computer (5 years old) has problems with overheating (when I was having problems with Expedition:Vikings, the developer suggested I use afterburner to see if that was an issue), and for that reason I was wondering if liquid cooling actually keeps a computer cooler than a fan does.

Liquid cooling should be much more effective at removing heat from the system. It has a far higher specific heat capacity, and can transfer that heat out to a much larger radiator to disperse it.

I don't like liquid cooling myself. THere are a few simple ones from coolermaster but it just isn't worth it. However, i did spurge for a noctsu cpu fan and it works really really well and was easy to install. However, it is expensive - there are cheaper ones that are rated just as good - but they tend to be harder to install. For haswell refresh cpu the noctus drop my cpu temp 35 degree (90 to 55) when max stressed (prime95 which kills the fpu)
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For all cpu (amd and intel) up to and including sandybridge I used stock fan and they worked quite well - esp amd. However, with haswell refresh i7 stock fan was not sufficient and there were numerous complaints. However, cpu after haswell refresh (I think) run cooler so stock fan might be ok. Also if you are building a new system wait till intel fixes the security issue in hardware (should be next 3 to 6 months for the new cpu).
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For PSU I like seasonic platinum or rosewill platinum (rosewill is a newegg brand); - platinum is an efficiency rating - the seasonic are expensive but i usually pick them up during blackfriday sales when they are 40% discounted.
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I can't imagine why you would need a 850 PSU. Even if running twin 1080 650 should be plenty. While you want to run a psu no more than 80% - running one at 20% kills the efficiency.
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You should read the reviews on your psu before buying - johnnyguru is an excellent site also this link provides a list of of reviews per model - most psu are made by a few vendors (superflower, seasonic, …) but the really cheap ones (not cheap in cost cheap in construct) are truely awful:
http://www.realhardtechx.com/index_archivos/PSUReviewDatabase.html
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I used to live in Vienna (well lived there for one year) and don't remember electronics being very cheap - most of my comments are for usa.

Yeah, electronics are expensive here.

forgottenlor said:

I was wondering if liquid cooling actually keeps a computer cooler than a fan does.

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You'll see lower temps with the CPU, but not really with anything else. The heat still has to dissipate somewhere. It might better displace the CPU heat outside the case, but that shouldn't be an issue if you have proper ventilation in your case anyways.

If you're getting any sort of overheating issues (when not overclocking), it's usually not because the stock fans are insufficient, but because they're under-performing for some reason. Open your case, clean out all dust from all CPU, GPU, MOBO and case fans that you can. Make sure all the fans run freely. If you spin them with your finger, they should continue to spin freely for a second (or longer) after you've stopped touching them. If you they stop spinning almost the instant you let go (or they feel tight), then you probably have a bearing issue, or junk trapped in the fan, making it spin at lower RPMs, and throttling down your gadgets. Start by replacing those first. If your CPU fan is bad, look into a simple aftermarket solution like the one I linked above (something with a copper core and heat pipes). It will be MORE than enough for what you're doing. Also use some decent CPU heat paste. Only a couple drips worth is needed.

Liquid cooling is either an enthusiast/hobby or extreme thing, there's no need for it in normal use.

As for the power supply the quality is what you should be worrying about. Just ensure you get one with enough power then look into the quality.

There are, if somewhat outdated memory serves, only two power supply brands you can buy on blind faith, those being Delta and Super Flower. All others have either messed up at some point or outright screwed customers abusing their brand name, even going as far as putting a +-450W PSU inside a +-550W PSU case and selling it as such.

Find one you think may be worth it then look for a review to make sure it isn't one of those craptastic examples.

Any decent review site that has a collection of PSU reviews should do, even if you only read the "conclusion" page it could save you a headache. Though for power supplies the first name that comes to mind is www.jonnyguru.com

Actually I would disagree. I believe the most reliable brands are Delta and Seasonic but the newest Super Flowers have finally caught up with Seasonic. Seasonic has 3 or 4 (with different efficiency in each line - so something like 9 or 10 different sets of psu) lines with the cheapest being ok but not as good as the other grades.